An unknown person attempted to register 54 dead Democrats to vote in Florida, a battleground state in the 2020 election.
According to the Sun Sentinel, whoever is behind the fraud may actually live in Columbia, South Carolina, and “submitted at least 54 new voter applications in July in the same neat handwriting to the Broward elections office, several in each of 19 envelopes.”
Many of the names on the ballot applications belonged to elderly citizens who had passed away recently outside of Florida.
“Almost all of them were flagged by Broward elections office staff as suspicious, and turned over to the Broward State Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors have been watching since August, in a sting operation to catch the culprit, internal correspondence shows,” the outlet reported.
State Attorney’s Office Spokeswoman Paula McMahon told the Sentinel that her office “cannot comment on an ongoing, active criminal investigation.”
Luckily, election officials in the battleground state flagged most of the ballot applications, but at least three were successfully added to the voter rolls in July. Two of the dead Democrats that made it onto the voter rolls had passed away a month prior, in June.
Pete Antonacci, the Broward Elections Supervisor, told the Sentinel about the fraud after the outlet questioned him on three odd voter ID cards sent to the same address in Davie, Florida. The man who received these cards, registered Republican Pete Fisher, looked into the names on them, and found that all three belonged to dead Democrats.
“This is an organized effort by someone who knew a little bit about Florida law but not a lot, and had a scheme to either undermine the Florida registration system with fake voters, or intended to vote 50 times,” Antonacci said.
The voters would be classified as a “MARG,” or “Mail Registrant” who had not submitted the required identification.
“It would have been another layer of fraudulent activity in order for them to vote,” Broward Elections Spokesman Steven Vancore said. “They did not vote.”
“We take any allegation of voter fraud very seriously because it affects our very democracy. Anyone who has information regarding any attempt to commit the crime of voter fraud should report it to the Broward Supervisor of Elections and the Broward State Attorney’s Office so it can be thoroughly investigated,” Broward State Attorney Mike Satz said Friday.
The attempted fraud in this battleground state amounts to very few votes, and is far from any potential mass fraud that could have a serious impact on the election.
0 comments